Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ising critical exponents

Ising critical exponents

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A weird article that contains a bunch of undefined Greek letters and some gobbledegook --Altenmann >talk 18:28, 26 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 21:28, 26 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia contains hundreds of thousands of highly specialized articles in exact sciences (physics, mathematics, biology). If a non-expert looks on an article they may find it's gibberish. The terminology of the article is standard, and it is supported by links to other existing articles. PhysicsAboveAll (talk) 07:28, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not for highly-specialized experts. Highly-specialized experts usually read highly-specialized books and papers, rather than essays of high-school students in wp. Whereas an encyclopedia is for laymen who, with some perseverance, could have some edication. But here it is not the case. The article is 100% based on primary sources. The only book cited is a ref for "Critical exponent". Therefore it is impossible to verify whether it is up-do-date or even correct at any point in time. --Altenmann >talk 07:51, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The referencing is not great, but the book contains enough discussion about the Ising model for verification, and Pelissetto & Vicari (2002) is a review article (Section 3.2. is about the Ising critical exponents). In addition, while the research articles are primary sources for the new results, they are secondary for older results and the history of problem. 130.234.230.66 (talk) 15:28, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I completely agree @PhysicsAboveAll on this, and I strongly disagree with the proposed deletion of this article. Wikipedia is used both by laymen and experts, and as long as either (in the best case both) group benefits from the existence of an article, one should not remove it. I do agree that this article is lacking in numerous aspects, I have personally used it several times in the past and found it useful. 139.18.9.3 (talk) 10:22, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. No valid reason for deletion (WP:DEL-REASON) has been given. Wikipedia strives to be accessible, but this does not mean that technical articles should be removed. Instead, they should be written one level down from the level the content is usually presented on (WP:ONEDOWN). In this case, this is a topic usually presented on an advanced course in statistical mechanics, so the text should ideally be written to be accessible to an undergraduate physics student. Notability is not a concern, as the critical exponents of the Ising model are a central topic in statistical mechanics, discussed for example in Kenneth Wilson's 1982 Nobel lecture. A more accessible introduction would be David Tong's lecture notes (Ch. 5) Leo Kadanoff's commentary in Journal Club for Condensed Matter Physics (cited in the article) is a useful secondary source here. 130.234.230.66 (talk) 12:48, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to Ising model. I do not see that the critical exponents are an independently notable topic that need a subarticle here. Reywas92^Talk 14:08, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Notability is not an issue, as there's ample discussion about the exponents in the literature. Of course, they are always discussed in the context of the model, but note that the prose size of Ising model is 12086 words, not counting the parts formatted as lists. Probably there is a lot of fluff to be condensed, but at the moment this suggests that we should not add more stuff (see WP:SIZERULE), but instead split off subarticles. There may, however, be better ways to do the split than the current one. 130.234.230.66 (talk) 15:11, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There are zero sources in the Ising model#Four dimensions and above, which like a lot of the article is dense explanations of formulas. Much of this could be trimmed since we are an encyclopedia not a textbook. The article uses "we" 32 times... Reywas92^Talk 17:49, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that it can be improved, but that should be done by someone knowledgeable, otherwise it might not improve WP. The Ising model in 4-epsilon and higher dimensions is discussed in standard textbooks, which indicates that we should also have a substantial discussion. In the Encyclopedia of Condensed Matter Physics (2024), the word "we" is used 4562 times over its 4473 pages. MOS:WE also makes an exception for "author's we" in scientific writing. 130.234.240.12 (talk) 19:19, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]